DAR’s Difference Makers will move to virtual event as safety precaution

A tough decision was made Friday morning at the Daily American Republic. The newspaper decided a month ago to move forward with its annual Difference Maker banquet at the Holiday Inn banquet hall Aug. 20 at 6:30 p.m. Even though we are in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, the DAR came up with many safety measures to help keep the attendees as safe as possible. The precautions included: Everyone would be required to wear a mask at all times, other than while eating; the meal would be served to the attendees instead of going through a serving line; the number of attendees was cut in half from a year ago; the tables would be social distanced and a limited number of people would sit at each table. Then the past two weeks happened. The number of COVID-19 cases in Butler County has increased significantly since that time and we no longer believe we can do enough to assure the safety of our Difference Maker finalists, their families, the nominators, the guest speaker and our staff. We are heart-broken because we know how excited the 10 finalists were to attend the event. They shared with our reporters how they didn’t want the recognition, though they were looking forward to sharing the importance of volunteerism to the community. We’ve come up with a way for our finalists to still be honored and for us to name our Difference Maker of the Year. We are in the process of putting together a video that will follow the same timeline as the live event, and it will be posted to the DAR’s website and the DAR’s Facebook page at 6 p.m. on Aug. 20. We hope our finalists will have “watch parties” with their families and friends, and we hope to get pictures from those events to share in the newspaper. The DAR will cover the video event the same as if it was live, and Friday, Aug. 21’s newspaper will be full of Difference Maker coverage. To say the newspaper staff is deflated because of the event going from live to virtual would be a major understatement. Last year’s event exceeded our expectations with almost 225 attendees. It was well-received by the community. But we couldn’t take the chance of potentially exposing someone (or many) to the coronavirus. That would be irresponsible on our part. I’m confident our video presentation will show the community how much good the finalists do to help others. The DAR will announce the 10 finalists in a special section in the Aug. 15 newspaper. Thank you for reading the DAR. Chris is the publisher for the Daily American Republic. He can be reached by email a cpruett.dar@gmail.com .